This one really freaks me out. I help my dad coach my little sister's softball team (6th & 7th graders) and we're always nervous that someone is going to get hurt because they aren't paying attention or the ball takes a weird bounce or whatever.
My other sister once broke a teammate's jaw at practice with a line drive, so these can happen. It's freaky but I don't think you can just give up altogether and go live in a bubble or something.

I read about a lacrosse player that got hit in a simliar fashion (ball to chest) where it stops their heart beat and they never recover. Crazy stuff.

Yeah, that guy was from Cornell.

I had a teammate on my wrestling team in HS who broke his own strenum during a match once. He was pinning his oppenent but all of a sudden he just stopped, stood up, and then fell to his back and started yelling for help. I still don't really know what happened, something just snapped. Luckily he was okay in the long run, but it was sort of creepy at first.

It would be REALLY distracting or the fielders. If this was a more common occurrence, we might see it, but it would be tough to adjust to. Batting helmets cut down on your peripheral vision and could cause more injuries.

There was a player I remember who wore a batting helmet without earflaps in the field. John Olerud.

Still, it's really not necessary. You can't prevent freak injuries. You could be hit in the throat or the kidney by a ball and die too. You just can't cover up every part of your body for a once in a million injury.

It would be REALLY distracting or the fielders. If this was a more common occurrence, we might see it, but it would be tough to adjust to. Batting helmets cut down on your peripheral vision and could cause more injuries.

There was a player I remember who wore a batting helmet without earflaps in the field. John Olerud.

Still, it's really not necessary. You can't prevent freak injuries. You could be hit in the throat or the kidney by a ball and die too. You just can't cover up every part of your body for a once in a million injury.

Olerud wore the earflap-less helmet because he had some sort of brain/skull condition that if he were to get hit just right in the head, the results would be fatal...going back, I can't think of anyone else who wore that style helmet in the field.